Skeleton

The grin arrived before the step. A skeleton crossed the room, bone on bone, the walking dead of the old night story, a quiet click and no breath at all. People set down their cups. They left with a skeleton gift in the wrist, the knowledge of how light a body can be. It comes back in skeleton playing cards that click when they fall, in a skeleton notebook with a rib of a margin, in a skeleton postcard of the grin and the empty chest. The lamp holds. The bones do not sit.